Chicago suffered a true loss last week. Ed Paschke passed away last Thursday from heart failure.

Regardless of one’s opinion on his paintings, Paschke is a Chicago institution and a damn good guy. About 10 years ago I was writing a term paper for an art history class. I had seen a slide of a painting he did that really blew me away a year or so prior and wanted the picture really badly for the paper. I had searched and searched for anything with that image and couldn’t find it. So I emailed him and he was very thankful of my compliments and said he would dig around to see if he could find anything. I didn’t expect anything of the exchange. I was just happy that he was so cool about it. A week or so later a slide of that painting showed up in my mailbox.

The NYTimes has a good writeup. (registration required) as well as the Trib (registration required) and WBEZ’s Eight Forty-Eight has a good piece. (real audio)

Also, he did the only Chicago Cow I liked.

May he rest in peace.